Wardman Wire Magazine

Cartoon: Gaping Void

Victory for the Pommes!
Congratulations to Sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe. His opposite number in Australia, Kate Ellis will now have to wear an England jersey to a sporting event thanks to our athletes not only getting more gold medals that the ever winging Aussies, but actually getting more medals over all. We have become […]

It is a little over a month since Cease and Desist notices were sent to a series of bloggers.

I want to look back on what has been achieved - in both concrete terms and “soft” terms.

You can get up to speed by reading my “Introductory Guide“, or the list of people posting in support, or even the Press Room:

Dave Walker is a cartoonist who runs a popular website, which includes the blogs We Blog Cartoons, Cartoon Church and The Cartoon Blog.

On the morning of July 22nd 2008 he received a cease and desist letter threatening legal action unless he removed 75 posts from his Cartoon Church blog by lunchtime - i.e., half a day’s notice.

These 75 posts had reported the developing situation over a 2 year period in a UK book chain called SPCK, which had been taken over by a company run by Mark Brewer. Dave Walker’s was the main published source reporting the situation, asking questions about the management of the chain, and highlighting the treatment of the employees.

So, what has happened?

Heave-Ho Harry’s Place

Here we go again; another random party using our atrocious Libel Laws to close down criticism and debate. In this case it appears to be Sheffield Academic Jenna Delich, or her supporters, making legal noises to intimidate the iSP hosting the blog Harry’s Place.

Harry’s Place comments:

Though we have not yet seen the complaint submitted, we assume it runs along the lines that pointing out that Ms Delich linked to the website of a known neo-Nazi figure and former Ku Klux Klan leader is defamatory.

 

This is extraordinary since Ms Delich has not denied that she circulated links to David Dukes website. There would be no point since the evidence is in the public domain.

They committed the unforgiveable sin of “publishing a fact”, which means that any Libel Case is down the toilet for a start - if my legal head is screwed-on correctly tonight. And any iSP should know that, but the law makes it easier to give in. If allegation is not correct (I think it looks fine), then they (and the rest of us) may be skewered.

Leftish imbroglios and nuances are not my strong suit - but closing down debate by running squealing to an iSP using Britain’s nonsensical Libel Laws is the best way to make yourself look ridiculous.

The actors in this case: Jenna Delich is an activist with a bee in her bonnet for the campaign for an Academic Boycott of Israel, and the UCU is one of the main Unions for staff in Higher Education.

I’ve joined the Witanagemot Club.

Although I’m basically a Unionist, I think that there is an absurd inequality in the devolution system we have seen implemented by the current government - and that it is a dog’s dinner that needs to be given some semblance of equality.

Instead we have a system which has facilitated - to take just one example - explicit discrimination against Welsh, English and Northern Irish students within the Scottish Higher Education system at the hands of the Scottish Executive permitted by the the UK Government.

And that is leaving aside such small matters as the West Lothian question, that still need to be addressed.

The answer which I find most attractive would involving reducing the current national politican-bloat, which I support as a general principle, and having one set of representatives who sit in the UK Parliament in London for UK matters, and in the Regional Parliaments (including London) for part of the time on devolved matters.

You can find the Witanagemot Aggregator here. The Blogroll will be added to the home page when I decide how.

Note - these are my views and no indicator that other writers here agree.

The online portal Malaysia Today has been blocked by the
Malaysia largest ISP TMNET on orders from the Malaysia Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) as such overseas visitors and non TMNET subscribers can access the site but those using TMNET can not. 
A MCMC official is quoted thus: 
“It is being blocked because we found that some of […]

Cartoon: Gaping Void

This week’s Britblog Roundup has gone down market and is over at Brassneck on the Telegraph website, and it’s come out this week at roughly the right time for once..

Today Brassneck joins the BritBlog Roundup network. It’s my first go at it, so Roundup veterans, please be patient if I confound your expections (in a bad way, that is).

It may seem strange to have a big-media blog joining the network. Have a look at Mick Fealty’s post last week “On the importance of engagement in blogging…” to understand the thinking; it is all about convergence and training journalists and the big media to pick up on the conversational aspects of blogging, in addition to the “promotional” and “informality” aspects they have already embraced.